India Faces Dry Spell as Customs Blocks Booze

If your local bar in India has run out of your favorite imported booze, it may very well be stuck in customs along with more than a million other bottles of Scotch whisky and wine which have been piled up in warehouses in Delhi and Mumbai for months as importers and government officials squabble over labeling.

The food has since rotted or been shipped back, but the alcoholic beverages remain stuck. Customs officials say the bottles’ labels have to include ingredients. That would mean a bottle of Scotch has to list malted grain, water and yeast.

The labeling requirements have been on the books since 2011 but had gone unenforced, which made the sudden halt in shipments a surprise, say importers who say there is still more than 50 containers full of alcohol waiting to be cleared.

Spirits importers did not believe that regulations designed to govern food would apply to products like Scotch and wine. In most countries, these products are exempt from ingredient-labeling requirements.

Importers were given two years to comply with the new rules, said S. Dave, who works on regulatory issues for the Food Safety and Standards Authority.

“The traders and exporters must realize that if the rules are there, they must be respected,” Mr. Dave said.

Spirits importers say that the label requirements are unnecessary and the way they are applied makes it close to impossible for them to guess exactly how they are supposed to label the products.

“They rejected a shipment of champagne because it did not say wine on the label. Prosecco was sent back because it said ‘made in Italy’ in Italian, not English,” said a wine importer who did not want to be named.

Meanwhile, it sometimes seemed like Indian inspectors lack the expertise to monitor the industry, the importer said.

“One inspector accused an importer of adulterating wine after finding traces of methyl alcohol in a bottle, but methyl alcohol is a natural byproduct of the wine-making process,” he said.

Mr. Dave said importers were at fault for thinking the new rules didn’t apply to them.

“The Scotch Whisky Association and others say that ingredient labels are not required in the U.S., EU and other places, but Indian law requires this,” he said. “Why should they not declare it? What is the harm?”

Importers have had to cancel orders, afraid that they will get stuck again. Even if there is more clarity on what should be listed as an ingredient, some small importers may even go out of business, the importers said.